Category: Notes from Andrea

As soon as the stairs were torn out it was apparent that the floor upstairs was basically held up by a couple boards and a prayer. Last weekend we moved everything out of the back room – every book and bookshelf as well as everything I had hastily stored on the floor upstairs (brought down by ladder as there are no stairs). Movers came on Monday and hauled everything to a storage unit. The floor and ceiling came down the same day, and today the footings are being poured below the floor for the pillars. What a week. We will definitely be having a party when this is all over.

We were able to cancel or move most of the events scheduled at the store this month but there are still a few things going on. Our book club and poetry club will meet again this month in the front half of the store. The three events listed at the beginning of the newsletter will actually be in the next door space recently vacated by Thomas Architect Studios. The space is currently being renovated as an expansion for Fosbre Academy & Hair Salon and they are so very kindly letting us use it for our events.

In other less-fraught news, I have read some really wonderful books lately. Educated by Tara Westover, a memoir of growing up in a survivalist/fundamentalist Mormon family, deserves every bit of attention it has received. It’s a harrowing yet hopeful account. I finally read Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan – if you are in the mood to fall into a well-written historical novel, this is your book. I also really loved Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship by Father Gregory Boyle. Next up I am planning to read the first two novels in the Karl Ove Knausgaard seasonal quartet, Autumn and Winter, as well as the March book for our store book club, The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore.

We are still open our usual hours and would love to see you. Whew, what a wordy update!

One of our bookshop goals for 2018 is to create deeper and more meaningful content on our website. Clare and I are both working on this and we hope to post here on the blog a couple times each week.

As usual, I am reading so many good things. Last week I finished two good (slim) memoirs:

Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor (one of Obama’s favorite reads on 2017).It’s often said that life is short. But life is also simultaneous, all of our experiences existing in time together, in the the flesh. For what are we, if not a body taking a mind for a walk, just to see what’s there? And, in the end, where do we get to, if not back to a beginning that we’ve never really left behind?

Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge.I was consumed by all that I saw and I shut out the noise. You cannot wait for it to get quiet. Not in New York, nor anywhere else. You must create your own silence.